In the area of ‘voice conferencing’ the ability to measure and manage the user experience across a large user base is an important capability requirement for service providers. An important cost in a subscription or service based voice conferencing system is the loss of a customer due to their experience not meeting general or competitive expectations. Whilst in some cases, such user dissent may be voiced to an operator of the provider of the voice conference service, quite often the first signs can be the loss of customers and accounts which can have a significant impact on the business success of the provider of the voice conference service.
To this end, there is an interest around the online and automated assessment of telecommunications systems performance. Some areas of system performance and quality assessment are the assessment of voice quality, the assessment of system audio latencies, the assessment of network performance, the processing for echo and noise abatement (e.g. G.160 or G.167), and the assessment of call stability.
There may be other higher level measures of performance for a communications system that may not map to any one of the above mentioned singular technical quality measures. Such higher level measures become increasingly important as the complexity of terminals, the number of parties present, and the diversity of use cases increases for typical voice conferencing systems. In the present document, such a higher level measure is described, which is of significant impact and inherent value to the quality of a voice conference. In the present document, means for objectively and automatically monitoring such a higher level measure are described.
Technology can provide an alternative to parties of a meeting being physically present in order to commence and conduct a meeting. However, such technology can also create an obstacle and distraction in achieving a quorum and commencing a meeting. In addition to general lateness and attendance issues, a voice conferencing system can create a barrier and delay for a meeting as people may need to install, locate, load, configure, test and establish correct operation of devices that are not always primarily dedicated to the purpose of voice conferencing. Without a doubt, and from countless examples and anecdotal evidence, such delay in commencing a meeting is common and can be attributed and associated with new technologies.
In considering the cost of such inefficiency, the event of a meeting brings together a set of people, all of whom may have a role to play in the organization. The lost time caused by a delayed meeting commencement is therefore multiplied by the number of people attempting to meet. This inefficiency aspect is further underlined by the fact that the delays are often longer for larger groups trying to co-ordinate via technological means. In view of this, the present document describes a measure which allows to reliably and automatically measure and/or track such delays incurred for the commencement of voice conferences. In particular, the present document describes a framework and technique for determining the amount of time elapsed from the first attempt or scheduled point of a meeting, until the activity and dynamic of the voice conference represents a functional meeting behavior. As will be outlined in the present document, the measurement of the delay in the commencement of the voice conference can be achieved by data logging, analysis, pattern matching and/or heuristics (as well as a combination thereof) to provide a reliable metric for meeting commencement.
The value of a reliable and automatic measure for determining the delay of commencement of a voice conference lies e.g. in tracking and improving (i.e. reducing) such delay. The reduction of the delay may be achieved e.g. through technological means (improvements of the voice conference system) and through social conditioning means (corporate norms for meeting promptitude, etc.). In particular, the estimated delay of commencement of a voice conference may be used to adjust the settings of an audio conference system (e.g. the talker positions of a 2D or 3D conference scene), in order to reduce the delay of commencement. When incorporated into a corporate conferencing system, the metric described in the present document may be a useful measure of meeting effectiveness and user experience.